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Perhaps someday your next best customers will be Martians. Well,
not Martian in the traditional sense, anyway.

A Dutch initiative called Mars One has ambitious plans: to send four
people to colonize the red planet by 2024. Another crew of
four will follow two years later. Another two years after
that. And so on. The catch, of course, is that they will not
come back to Earth.

During a five-month application period which ended this fall, the
group says more than 200,000 people signed up to be among the
first four people to live
on Mars.

Here's the Mars One video explaining the project:

Mars One has contracted Lockheed Martin and Surrey Satellite
Technology Ltd. to develop mission concept studies for an
unmanned mission to the planet in 2018, including a robotic
lander and a communications satellite. Among the lander's
"highest priorities" will be to conduct an experiment
demonstrating how liquid water can hopefully be produced on
planet's surface, Mars One chief executive Bas Lansdorp
told CNN.

While the project still faces some major hurdles and is a long
ways from becoming a reality, it does point to some entertaining
possibilities for the future of human civilization. Where people
go, business opportunities follow, right?